Stupid Magazines

When you work with magazines, you never know.
Even when they give you an assignment, chances are (many) that the project doesn't get published. You can try to find another publication to run the story but sometimes the time you have to find it is so tight that the work just expires unpublished; magazines is a fast world.

I own a magazine and have lived the experience from both sides, the non-published professional and the one who decides not to publish something assigned; so I know.

As a stylist/photographer, it sucks when a publication rejects a job: time and energy, and so many times money, go directly to the drain.
But as a "decider", as a fashion editor, I know some works are just not what I expected and to be honest with the aesthetic of a magazine, you need to back up.

The good news is that now we have a wonderful blog that publishes very renown professionals' work that was rejected for magazines. They tell you what went wrong and how the shoot was made. Some works are good, some are not, but you will know first hand what the hell happened. The blog is called Stupid mags, and it's pure eye candy.

Full Time Sado by Tony Solís

Full time sado was made almost two years ago with the help of 'El Pana', my ex roomie who was a Venezuelan model. All the equipment and the clothes were borrowed from a rock/sado store. The day of the shooting was the last day of El Pana living on our apartment too, so I woke him at 8 am and in two hours we made this series. They are lots of images, so I tried to make a selection that represent the story I tried to tell. It couldn't be published for unknown reasons.

Hot Dogs by Colectivo Banquels

These polaroids were made like three years ago. We sent them to a magazine or something and they never were returned. It was a goofy work but I think they are great. The scanning is awful, but it is the only thing we have of them. Anyway, they don't look like what we are doing now at all.

New York Fashion Week. SS09. United Bamboo

I was really exciting to attend United Bamboo's SS 09 show.

My relation with them started when I interviewed them for hotel diana magazine months ago.
Although their style is too girly for my taste, I respect and like their subtle experimentation in a place and a market, New York, where experimentation is not the norm. I even think they don't experiment more because they're not "allow" to, not because they don't want. I remember once in a sample sales to see really interesting dresses that i didn't see later at the stores. When I asked their PR why he told me because American buyers told them not to produce those pieces because the stores would never buy them... too avant-garde for American standards. Here is where I live...

Miho and Thuy presented their SS09 collection at the Altman Building in Manhattan.
It was Saturday and hurricane Gustav was paying a brief visit to New York. The day woke up windy and overcast and looking depressing. At least for me.
In any case, there I went, exciting with my invitation on hand.

The line to enter the building was LONG as expected and we had to wait outside for a little while. The girl in front of me was dressed beautifully, with a nice floral dress and red shoes and purple shirt, the same color combo I was about to see inside... in general people was dressed really nicely and there there were many street style photographers taking pictures, among them Yvan the FaceHunter.

One of the reasons I love to see shows is for the people who attends them. The show sometimes is secondary because at times your location is so far away you can't even see the cloths, or the show is way too short to really enjoy... United Bamboo's crowd was really interesting to see.

The collection was pretty and very 60's, girlier and less experimental than their SS08, with really nice color combos.

The finishing touch was given by Iekeliene Stange; it's always a pleasure to see this girl on the catwalk.

New York Fashion Week. SS09. Iris Loeffler

A show that starts with Grauzone's Eisbär can't be a bad show.

German designer Iris Loeffler's SS09 collection put a beginning to my fashion week schedule, and it was totally by chance that I went because I was still unpacking from a trip to Madrid when I received the call of my friend Max sanjulián who was DJ-ing at the event.

The show was held at LaViolaBank gallery on East Broadway, and it was cram with beautiful people, many of them European.

Free beer for everyone, just like an art opening.

This was Iris, who interns at Zero Maria Cornejo, first collection.

--------------------------------------

El viernes pasado, recién llegadita de Madrid, se inauguró mi fashion week con el desfile de la colección Primavera Verano 09 de la diseñadora alemana Iris Loeffler.

Iris, que trabaja en Zero Maria Cornejo, se estrena como diseñadora con esta colección que fué presentada en la galería LaViolaBank en East Broadway, en la zona de Chinatown.

Mucha gente guapa, muchos de ellos europeos cómo no :) y cerveza gratis para todo el mundo.
Para empezar el show, un tema mítico, Eisbär de Grauzone, que mi amigo Max Sanjulián, DJ del evento y quien me invitó al sarao, nos regaló para dejarme más contenta que unas pascuas. Con una canción asi no hay show que pueda quedar mal!

Another Year Again. New York Fashion Week.

As opposed to other seasons when I used to RSVP to every single show in town, I decided I only want to attend those I am interested in and avoid wasting my time with designers I care very little about.

Thus, this year's summary of my NYFW experience will be petite, maybe just 4 or 5 shows on the whole.

This doesn't mean I only like 4 or 5 designers in town; it just means that among all my invitations there are only 4 or 5 I am interested in.

Unfortunately there are many others I love I haven't been invited to like Patrik Rzepski, Zero Maria Cornejo, Ohnetitel, Y3, Alexandre Herchcovitch, Alexander Wang, Preen, Rodarte, VPL...

Yesterday I attended my first show, the SS09 collection of German designer Iris Loeffler, an intern at Zero Maria Cornejo who was presenting with this her first collection.

I'm uploading the images, will be ready by tomorrow with more news from today's shows, among them, United Bamboo.

Good morning Fashion Week!

Truly in love with the new cover of Kaiserin magazine

Cover photography by American artist Brandon Herman

And they know it is awesome; only the cover is download-able through their website.

Glorious Scars

There is a whole beauty market to get rid of scars and acne marks; lotions, Vitamin E capsules, cortisone injections, surgery, spa treatments... I once lived with a girl that was so obsessed with her scars that she could payed hundred of dollars per month just to get rid of them.

Surgery for scars that were produced in terrible accidents disfiguring one's face is one thing to support, of course. But I would like to question this nowadays' panic on imperfect beauty. Why is that?

Aren't scars beautiful? the most magnificent prove that we are alive?
They tell untold stories, and there's nothing sexier than a man with a striking scar...


Joaquin Phoenix's lip scar:




Harrison Ford's chin scar:





David Gandy's eyebrow scar:





Sean Avery's lip scar:




Le Corbusier's leg scar:
image courtesy of search & destroy




Mary J Blige's eye scar:




Kristen McMenamy's belly scar:

Say hello to my first Comme des Garçons!

This will be my first Comme des Garçons piece to add to my wardrobe... now that's absolutely exciting.

I bought it on Ebay, it was for sale, no bidding involved. The price was really a deal and it amazed me that the garment has been up since April and no one till now have seen it before...

Description from Ebay seller:

" This dress is SAMPLE from robe COMME des GARCONS.

I don't know this sample was released to street.
Anyway This is so rare and hard to get in even Japan.
Size on tag and Material tag are not for sample cloth. "

Please Drink Tap Water or Avoid Plastic Bottles As Much As You Can

One of the first things you can encounter at the tents of New York fashion week since 2003 are free bottles of Fiji water.

Once inside the building there you find big blue plastic containers with the tiny bottles ready to be picked up, and you couldn't be happier than sipping the liquid Kate Moss swears by...

All those who know me know that I'm addicted to bottled waters, specially Evian. My addiction is such that my hubby gave me 5 bottles of 1.5 liters of Evian water for my birthday... so there you have.

I love the taste of water and I like to taste the waters around the world. I have a very sensitive water-taste and can differentiate between one drink and another with just a sip...

... now let me tell you; please don't follow my steps and read what follows. It's serious stuff. And all my "coolness" for drinking hot bottled waters just go directly to the drain...

Extract from an article by Dr David Suzuki, scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation, Companion to the Order of Canada and a recipient of UNESCO's Kalinga Prize for science, the United Nations Environment Program medal, and Global 500, he's also Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and holds 22 honorary degrees from universities around the world, and Dr Faisal Moola, Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

The water that comes out of most city taps in Canada is pretty clean.
Yet many people prefer to spend money on bottled water, believing that it is somehow safer.

Now we’re learning that the stuff in plastic water bottles may be more harmful than anything in our tap water.

'Bisphenol A' is just one chemical that’s been in the news recently – and in many plastic bottles. This compound mimics estrogens (human female hormones) and has been linked to breast and ovarian cancers and childhood developmental problems. It is found in clear, hard polycarbonate plastic commonly used in household and commercial water coolers and some reusable bottles, and it’s just one potentially harmful substance associated with plastic containers.

The presence of chemicals isn’t the only reason we should try to wean ourselves from the bottle, though. For one thing, bottled water is expensive, costing more than a comparable amount of gasoline. Unlike most nations on Earth, Canada has vast quantities of fresh water. Have we so polluted our water that we feel compelled to pay a lot for it? And from beginning to end (and for plastics, that end is a long time away), plastic bottles contribute to environmental problems. To start, the manufacturing process is a factor in global warming and depletion of energy resources.
It takes close to 17 million barrels of oil to produce the 30 billion water bottles that U.S. citizens go through every year. Or, as the National Geographic website illustrates it: "Imagine a water bottle filled a quarter of the way up with oil. That’s about how much oil was needed to produce the bottle."


It also takes more water to produce a bottle than the bottle itself will hold. Canadians consume more than two billion litres of bottled water a year, and globally, we consume about 50 billion US gallons a year. Unfortunately, most of those bottles – more than 85 per cent, in fact – get tossed into the trash rather than the recycling bin.

The pollution from plastics affects our air, land, and water. Many plastic bottles end up in landfills or get incinerated, and burning plastic releases toxic chemicals into the air. Plastic that stays on land or that is buried can take hundreds of years to break down, and even then, it doesn’t completely biodegrade. One of the most disturbing things is what happens to plastic that ends up in the oceans – which is about 10 per cent of all plastic produced, according to Greenpeace.

About 550 miles off the coast of California, a massive, expanding island of plastic debris 100 feet deep and bigger than the province of Quebec, swirls in what is known as the North Pacific Gyre. In a recent column for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s website, writer Heather Mallick described it as "a hideous chyme [semi-fluid mass] stretching and pulsing in the sea like an underwater gob of spiky phlegm."

Plastic doesn’t biodegrade; rather, it photodegrades, which means that, under sunlight, it just keeps breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. The tiniest bits of plastic, called nurdles, enter the food chain when they are eaten by marine animals and birds. Nurdles also soak up toxins, adding to the poisons consumed by animals and every creature up the food chain. More than a million birds and marine animals die every year from eating plastic waste or from becoming entangled in plastics. If the environmental damage caused by plastic bottles or the existence of potentially toxic chemicals in the bottles isn't enough to make you avoid them, how about some reasons that hit closer to home? First there’s the fact that many bottlers get their water from municipal supplies.

Coca Cola filters and bottles water from municipal sources in Calgary, Alberta and Brampton, Ontario for its Dasani brand. Pepsi's Aquafina comes mostly from Vancouver, British Columbia and Mississauga, Ontario. That's right: they're taking your tap water and selling it back to you at a markup that can be as high as 3,000 times the price you pay for it through your taxes.

There's also a danger that governments may use the growing reliance on bottled water as an excuse to avoid their responsibility to ensure we have access to safe drinking water. The federal government must address any existing concerns about drinking-water quality with enforceable standards designed to protect human health. If you're worried about chlorine in your drinking water, put it in a pitcher and let it stand overnight to allow the chlorine to evaporate – or consider buying a carbon activated filter for your tap. To carry water with you, fill up your stainless steel or glass bottle from the tap, and enjoy. Water is a precious resource that belongs to all of us. Let’s not take it for granted. And let’s not put it in plastic.

Reprinted from “Science Matters” a column by Dr. David Suzuki, PhD and Dr. Faisal Moola.

Via

More Science and Fashion Controversy. This time at the Olympics!

Chinese Olympic Committee gave fashion importance enough such to banned Spain synchronized swimmers from wearing their "flashy" swim suits...

The suits had embedded waterproof lights that flashed during the performance, a fact that seemed to be not of the liking of Chinese committee; they were afraid that someone would get electrocuted. Also by saying that "lights were an accessory" and cannot be used in competition. Thus, they banned the suits.

Andrea Fuentes, member of the team, answered: 'It is too innovative for such a conservative sport'

Some journalists and synchronized swimming experts attacked the Spaniards by saying that their flashy suits was just a trick to cover a poor performance... Spain won the competition after all beijing2008.cn

Here we have, another example of science fashion versus conservative ideals ...

Quote of the Day.- Oscar Wilde on Beauty

" To look at a thing is very different from seeing a thing. One does not see anything until one sees its beauty.
Then, and then only, does it come into existence."

The Decay of Lying
by Oscar Wilde





Right: MMM bracelet

Science and Fashion á la Chalayan

I met designer Di Mainstone months ago when she came to NYC to have a talk with the people at EyeBeam, an art and technology center that provides scholarships and tools for artists with technological ambitions.

The day we met we went to have lunch together and she showed me the sketches she was developing for the prestigious Institute for Unstable Media V2 in the Netherlands, where she was going to stay for the next couple of months.

Her main investigation was on garments that could be shared with other people and interact in some way or another with the wearer.

The sketches were really impressive, inspiring and beautiful and they reminded me the best work of Hussein Chalayan.

Di left for the Netherlands days later and kept me updated via facebook with the way her little child was developing.

Now the child is fully developed and looking good and healthy; Sharewear.

The two dresses that form the collection are exhibited through performance; Constructed from a series of magnetic modular blocks, the audience witnesses the work being unpacked from 2 flat-pack crates and assembled in real-time. Both wearer and audience are able to be part of this playful construction process by slotting the modular forms around the human form to create their own structure. British sound artist and producer Scanner composed a playful sound-scape, which is used throughout the presentation, to delineate hidden narratives and encourage the flow between audience and performer.

I couldn't hide my happiness when I saw the final result of this project.

Mostly because we all remember Hussein Chalayan's interview on i-D magazine months ago, his complaints on the lack of support for the type of fashion that he does; no matter how well known he is and how much we love him and his furniture-based dresses, he doesn't get enough founds and money support to continue doing what make us long for; forward-thinking fashion.

Hence the fact that there are more people doing it, getting scholarships and support and doing it so good... is inspiring.

Here's an instance on how fashion can be an art, a medium to develop ideas and forward thinking philosophies.

We don't know if we will ever dress like this but the existence of projects like these make us questioning the way we interact between each other and the role that clothing has on us.

Thanks Di! :)

** There will be more performances on September at the (Re)Actor in Liverpool, Wereld van Witte de With in Rotterdam and Today's Art in The Hague.

Check the v2 website for more updates.

Architecture for the Feet

Both Architecture and Fashion have always been my obsession but I'm really bad (and i mean what i say) at Mathematics so it was impossible for me to ever study architecture.

Fortunately many of my friends and family members are architects so they keep alive my love's flame. And my book's shelves for that matter!.

The fact that Fashion design is really architecture in a smaller scale was wonderfully analyzed by the exhibition Skin + Bones at the MOCA two years ago; garments house our bodies and can create new volumes and space around us.

If you have ever seen the sketches sent to the factories to create a garment you would be amazed at the similarities with architectural plans.

Now, fashion and architecture go together; and what about shoes?

Last year there was an amazing exhibition on Zaha Hadid's work at the Guggenheim in NY. I went to see it twice no matter the high price of the admission; she became one of my favourite architects alive.
I've been following her career ever since and now my surprise to see her work captured in a shoe, thanks to Brazilian plastic shoe manufacturer company Melissa.

image courtesy designboom

I tried to find Zaha's comments on these designs but couldn't find any interesting but "I have 30 years of research on different areas of architecture and design and this was a very challenging project, not only in design, but on the technical side." nymag.com
The shoes, unfortunately, will be only available at London's Dover Street Market, starting next month.

The making of a shoe model...

Metal magazine launch party. NYC

Spanish-based magazine Metal has became, in just a couple of years, a referent on what's cool and what's not in fashion photography.
Unfortunately it was hard to get a copy in the US and it was friend and NY fashion editor & content coordinator Angela Esteban Librero who provided copies for us to see.

The publication will finally be distributed in America (it already is) and last Tuesday Angela together with Romina Herrera Malatesta threw a launch party at the Dactyl Foundation Gallery, the same venue where S magazine had its launch party a couple of months ago.

EVERYONE was there, it was packed, it was hot, and it was fun.
The walls were covered with the work of photographer Christophe Kutner and a screen put in the back of the gallery showed the best works published in the magazine to date.

Free margaritas for everyone and obviously I got drunk as hell, my camera died before i could get any good picture and all I could save were a couple of snap shots that follow...

Male Back Portraits

By Nicholas Haggard
as seen in Bertha magazine #4